


I've Got So Many Walls I Might As Well Be a Maze (Fortunately, We Climb For A Living)

by iaj



Category: Mirror's Edge, Mirror's Edge Catalyst
Genre: Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 09:56:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7263283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iaj/pseuds/iaj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>- People are lonely because they build walls, instead of bridges. -<br/>Living a nightmare has the unfortunate tendency to cause them to be repeated in dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Got So Many Walls I Might As Well Be a Maze (Fortunately, We Climb For A Living)

**Author's Note:**

> This is just some Faith & Icarus friendship because he turned out to not be a douche and I think they make great bffs.

The dorm was quieter, without the rest of the runners. Faith had insisted they fix it back up; it didn't seem like KrugerSec was coming after them again (yet) and the lair was still the place for a central hub. None of the survivors were terribly convinced, though - the runners had scattered into smaller safe houses, for the most part. But Icarus didn't have anywhere else to go, and Faith insisted on staying as well. So, like perfectly mature adults, they slept on totally opposite sides of the dorm.

The dorm had never been the quiestest place in the world. It was chosen for it's location, not it's sound-proofing. Icarus was used to the noises of the city - sirens blaring, the loud rush of wind turbines, the hum of electricity.

He wasn't used to hearing a loud noise of distress, from the other end of the room.

Icarus was on his feet in half a second. His blankets flopped on the ground in a heap. The dark of the room was oppressive; he slammed his fist against the light switch on the wall. His eyes darted back and forth, searching. Were there spotlights? Laser sights? Drones? Soldiers?

The initial surge of adrenalin fled as he saw there was nothing outside. Confused, he turned towards Faith's bed. She was still asleep - twisting and turning, legs moving.

Well... Icarus knew plenty about bad dreams.

"Faith." He called, half-whispering.

Faith was instantly awake. Alert, maybe not. She bolted up, started to her feet, and paused upon seeing Icarus, half-risen from her bed.

"What?" She asked fuzzily.

"You were - " Icarus searched for the least-insulting term, "- shouting."

Faith sank back onto her bed. "Oh. Sorry."

"It's fine." Icarus replied, feeling awkward. He and Faith were on speaking terms now - hell, they were even on hugging terms (sometimes), and he trusted her to the ends of the earth as a fellow runner - but he knew better than most that didn't equate to I want you to be aware of my deepest darkest nightmares.

He switched the light off. "So, uh, sweet dreams," he said as he lay back down as well.

He stared at the wall, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at himself. Sweet dreams? Nice one, asshole.

\--

Icarus woke up to a choked-off cry, and managed to stop his bolt for the light after a step out of bed.

A quick moment of decision making. Go back to sleep and pretend this never happened, or knock something over to wake Faith up and pretend this never happened?

A quick moment of decision making stretched to a long moment. This was a tough decision at the best of times, let alone while still 75% asleep.

The length of the moment made the decision for him; Faith startled herself awake, flailing upright.

It was still dark, but the lights of the city shone through the window in the dorm room. She could see him. After a moment, she said, "Did I wake you?". Her voice was determinedly normal-sounding.

"No, I got up for -" Icarus free-associated randomly to fill the lie his panicked brain had half-supplied, "- hot chocolate."

After a long beat of silence, he asked, "Do you want one?"

There was an even longer beat of silence afterwards. Icarus decided he needed to work on his on-the-fly lying.

"I - yeah, that would be nice." Faith finally replied, letting out a huge breath and visibly relaxing.

"Great." Icarus replied brightly. He paused. "Do we even own hot chocolate?"

"We do," Faith told him. He couldn't see her expression in the dark. Her voice didn't sound ominous, thought, which was promising. "It's in the top kitchen cabinet."

"Cool," Icarus said, and made his way to the kitchen. Some fumbling and two hot chocolates later, he returned. Faith had turned the lights on their dimmest mode, and was sitting up, browsing some news site on a screen.

"Here." Icarus held it out while she carefully grabbed the cup so as not to burn herself.

She took a sip and made a small face. "Icarus, are you immune to sugar or something?"

Icarus frowned and sipped his drink. "Tastes fine to me. Don't complain about free food."

Faith snorted, but her face did seem... weirdly soft, for how she normally was. Icarus hesitated to think the word 'vicious'. Spiteful? Independent? He settled on 'aggressively self-sufficient'.

"Are you done looking at me?" Faith prompted him out of his thoughts.

Icarus hid his face by taking a drink of his chocolate. The drink was fine. She was totally full of shit. "If you weren't making such a stupid face at the drink, I wouldn't be looking at it."

Faith threw one of her pillows at him. It landed miles away.

\--

Somehow that had become a habit. Icarus woke up at about 3am every morning, made hot chocolates for them both, with a stupidly small amount of chocolate in Faith's mug. Went back to sleep at 4am, woke up at 8am like normal.

Faith never mentioned it. Icarus felt no need to mention it. It fixed the nightmare problem. Everyone was happy.

A++ problem solving, Icarus thought.

Except one day, he woke up not to Faith's choked off cry, but his own.

Fucking nightmares.

Faith happened to wake as well. Icarus kind of wanted to bury himself in the Black November tunnels. It was probably too late to defect, unfortunately.

"Did I wake you?" Icarus blurted.

Faith stood up and stretched. "I was already getting up. Want hot chocolate?"

Her blanket fell from around her legs as she slid out from under it. She had a serious bed head. Icarus was pretty sure she'd taken his role as blatant fucking liar.

Icarus nodded blankly. She left and he took deep, slow breaths in the silence. Wiped his face. Tried to wake up. He felt approximately 50% asleep, 50% adrenaline, which was a frankly exhausting mix.

By the time Faith returned, it was more like 80/20 in sleep's favour.

"One ridiculously sweet hot chocolate." She announced as she handed him his mug. Although "handed him", it was more like "dumped it on the edge of the bed with zero concern for Icarus' ability to grab it before it slid off". If it weren't for the fact that this was the proof Icarus needed to conclude she thought he was a perfectly competent human being, he would've been pissed.

He took a sip and made a noise. "What the hell, Faith. This is the temperature of lava. I think I can feel my tongue blistering."

"Don't be a baby." Faith told him, sitting with her own one, in her own bed. She took a sip, and then spat that sip back into her mug. After taking a moment to make a pained noise, she said, mostly to herself, "Okay, how did I manage to make it so hot?"

"I have literally no idea." Icarus groused. "Go get some ice cubes to dump in them."

Faith for once in her life, obediently did so. She returned, dumped a few ice cubes in each, downed her slightly-cooler-than-lava drink and rolled over to go back to sleep.

The silence felt awkward.

"Thanks." Icarus said.

He promptly cursed himself. Him and Faith worked best with zero acknowledgement of hardship. Except like, severe hardship. But that hardly counted. Keep it cool, show no weakness, so on and so forth. Aggressive self-sufficiency was a perfectly good way to about life. And, frankly, Icarus was also pretty damn uncomfortable with touchy feely emotions, so if he could just eat his words-

"Don't worry about it. 'night, Icarus." Faith said, already slightly mumbly with sleep.

"'night, Faith."

Well. That kind of worked too.

**Author's Note:**

> I kinda characterised Faith more like how I saw her in the original game. AKA badass and largely emotionally stunted. I like it.


End file.
